Chapter 38 #3
I understood this. I had always understood it.
The system that had enabled my operations was the same system that was now negotiating my removal, and the symmetry was, in its own way, almost beautiful: I had exploited the weaknesses of English society — the deference to aristocratic privilege, the reluctance of professional men to involve themselves in scandal, the legal protections afforded to persons of title and fortune — and the system, having recognised that those weaknesses were now a liability, was acting to remove the evidence of its own complicity.
Three men were dead because I had killed them.
But they were also dead because the physicians who treated them failed to report their suspicions, and the solicitor who managed my affairs failed to act on what he knew, and the social world that surrounded me failed to ask the questions that might have saved them.
A trial would expose all of this. A trial would drag the whole apparatus into the light, and the apparatus did not want to be in the light, because the light would show not just the criminal but the architecture of permission that had made the criminal possible.
I closed the document and placed it on my lap and looked at Sir Geoffrey, and he looked at me, and for a moment, the two of us regarded each other with the mutual recognition of people who understand each other perfectly, because we were, in our different ways, the same kind of person: people who operated within systems and who understood that systems exist to protect themselves, and that the protection of the system is always, in the end, prioritised over the delivery of justice to the individuals the system has failed.
"The terms are clear," I said. "I should like to discuss the provisions for my brother."
I had not expected to negotiate. I had expected to accept, because the alternative to acceptance was a trial that I might or might not win but that would, in either case, destroy everything I had built, and I had spent too many years building it to permit its destruction in a courtroom.
But Edmund was not a term. Edmund was not a condition.
Edmund was a person, and the person was mine, and the arrangements for his care were the only point in this entire negotiation that engaged something other than strategic calculation.
"The provisions for Mr. Blackwood are generous," Sir Geoffrey said, and his voice carried a quality that I recognised as rehearsed reassurance, the tone of a man who has anticipated this question and prepared an answer.
"The trust will provide for his residence, his care, his medical needs, and his general comfort for the remainder of his natural life.
A companion has been identified — a Miss Dorothea Crewe, who has served in your household and who, I am told, has a particular aptitude for his management.
She has agreed to continue in this capacity under the administration of the trust."
Dorothea. Of course. The choice was not coincidental.
Dorothea was the person Edmund knew best, after me, and her presence would provide continuity, and continuity, for a young man who required routine and familiarity and the predictable patterns of daily life, was not a luxury but a necessity.
The Home Office had understood this, or someone had understood it on their behalf, and the understanding was, I acknowledged with a reluctance that I did not examine too closely, both shrewd and humane.
They were not punishing Edmund for my crimes.
They were, in their institutional fashion, providing for him.
This did not redeem them. Nothing redeemed them.
But it was, in the context of a negotiation that was fundamentally about the suppression of truth for the protection of power, a small grace note that I chose to accept without comment.
"I should like Dorothea's appointment to be formalised in the trust documents," I said.
"Not as an employee of the trust, but as his companion, with her own quarters and her own allowance and the authority to make decisions about his daily care without reference to the trustees.
She has known him for four years. She understands his needs. The trustees will not."
Sir Geoffrey exchanged a glance with the small man at the table, and the small man made a note on one of his papers, and the glance and the note were the institutional machinery in operation, a process of consultation and adjustment that was, in its own way, as precise and as remorseless as anything I had ever deployed.
"This can be accommodated," Sir Geoffrey said, and the words were neutral, but the accommodation itself was a concession, and the concession told me something about the Home Office's position: they wanted this agreement signed.
They wanted it signed quickly and cleanly and without the complications of a public trial, and they were prepared to make reasonable adjustments to achieve that outcome.
This was useful. It meant that further negotiation was possible, and the possibility of negotiation was, in a situation where the alternative was surrender or prison, a form of power.
"I should like to specify the country to which I will travel," I said. "I am prepared to leave England. I am not prepared to have the destination chosen for me."
"Where would you prefer to go?"
"France. The south. Marseilles, or thereabouts.
" The choice was strategic. France was close enough to England that I could, in theory, receive news of Edmund through indirect channels, but far enough that the practical difficulties of extradition were significant, and the French authorities, when presented with a request from the English government, would require evidence and procedure and the formal mechanisms of international law, all of which took time and produced opportunities for delay and obfuscation.
Marseilles was a large city with a substantial English expatriate community, and the community would provide cover, a social context in which a single woman of means could exist without attracting attention.
"This is acceptable," Sir Geoffrey said, and the speed of his agreement confirmed my assessment: they wanted the agreement signed, and the destination was, within limits, negotiable.
"I should like to retain my personal effects.
Jewels, clothing, books, and household items of sentimental value.
" This was, in the context of the overall settlement, a minor request, but minor requests serve a purpose: they establish the pattern of negotiation, they communicate that the person making them is engaged and attentive and not merely accepting terms dictated from above, and they create a sense of reciprocity, a feeling on both sides that the agreement is being shaped by mutual consent rather than imposed by fiat.
"The personal effects are yours," Sir Geoffrey said. "The household items will need to be inventoried, but we have no interest in your jewellery or your clothing."
"And my correspondence?" I asked. "The letters and documents in my possession. They are to remain private?"
"The correspondence will be reviewed," he said, and the word "reviewed" was a euphemism for "examined," and the examination would be thorough, and anything that was deemed threatening to the interests of the government would be confiscated or destroyed.
"Personal letters of no evidentiary value will be returned to you. The remainder will be retained."
This was, I acknowledged, reasonable. The Home Office could not permit me to leave England with documents that might, at some future date, be used to embarrass the government or its agents.
The review was a safeguard, and the safeguard was necessary, and the necessity did not make it any less of a violation, but violations of this sort were the currency of arrangements like this one, and I had expected nothing less.
There were further details: the timeline for my departure, the specific mechanics of the financial transfer, the arrangements for the sale or lease of Blackwood House, the disposition of the household staff, the protocols for communicating with the trust regarding Edmund's welfare.
Each detail was discussed, each was negotiated, and each was settled with the careful precision of a transaction in which both parties understood that the smallest deviation from the agreed terms could have consequences that neither party wished to contemplate.
The small man with the spectacles wrote everything down.
The large man by the fireplace said nothing.
Sir Geoffrey presided over the proceedings with the calm authority of a judge, and I participated with the calm precision of a person who has spent her entire life in negotiations and who understands that the outcome of a negotiation is determined not by the strength of one's position but by the precision with which one exploits the weaknesses in the position of the other.
When the details were settled, Sir Geoffrey produced a second document, identical to the first but for the addition of the amendments we had discussed, and he placed it before me with a pen, and the pen was a good pen, a fountain pen with a gold nib, and the quality of the pen was itself a communication: this is how the Home Office conducts its business, with good pens and good paper and the quiet, expensive precision of an institution that has been refining the art of power for centuries.
"Take your time," he said, and the instruction was both courtesy and trap, because taking time implied hesitation, and hesitation implied doubt, and doubt was a weakness that the institutional machinery would note and file and remember.